United States v. Cummings

MEMORANDUM *

Deborah Cummings appeals her jury conviction of, and sentence for, making a *617 materially false statement in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 . We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm. Because the parties are familiar with the factual and procedural history of this ease, we do not recount it here.

I. Sufficiency of the evidence

We reject Cummings’s argument that there was insufficient evidence to support her conviction. In order to obtain a conviction against Cummings, the government was required to prove (1) that she made a statement; (2) the statement was false; (3) it was made with specific intent; (4) the statement was material; and (5) it related to a matter within agency jurisdiction. See United States v. Jiang, 476 F.3d 1026, 1029 (9th Cir.2007). The jury was presented with evidence that Cummings told an FBI Agent that she did not know Kirk Lyons, the man to whom she purportedly mailed classified documents, when in fact Cummings had attended his wedding and vacationed with him and his family. Contrary to Cummings’s assertion, this statement was material, because the government’s attempts to locate the documents would very likely have taken…